Venus is the planet of pleasure and love, governing your capacity for love, your ability to appreciate beauty, your social grace, and your friendships. Expressed in its positive form, Venus endows a person with sex appeal, charm, amiability, an appreciation of the arts, and an eye for beauty. Venus's influence manifests itself through romance, great art and music, and loving and sharing with others.

If Venus is afflicted (at odds with another planet in your horoscope), Venus's influence instills decadence, narcissism, and laziness. Since Venus is so close to the Sun (from earth's vantage point), it always lies within two signs (before or after) of your Sun sign.

Venus is the second planet in distance from the Sun and is the brightest object in the sky (except for the Sun and Moon, of course). It is called the morning star when it shines in the eastern dawn sky and it is called the evening star when it shines in the western sky at sunset. Because of its relatively close proximity to the Sun, Venus is never visible for more than three hours before sunrise or three hours after sunset.

Venus's dense atmosphere and complete cloud cover make it impossible to see the surface of the planet from earth. Its atmosphere is almost entirely composed of carbon dioxide and its clouds are concentrated sulfuric acid. Its surface temperature is a uniform and inhospitable 459 degrees Celsius. The Pioneer Venus 1 spacecraft conducted a radar mapping of the surface, revealing a relatively flat plain surrounding two continent-sized highland areas which have been named Aphrodite Terra and Ishtar Terra after two symbolic manifestations of the goddess Venus. The Magellan spacecraft has discovered large active volcanoes and lava flows, as well as extensive meteorite craters.

Venus completes its orbit around the Sun every 226 days and has a mass which is 82 percent that of earth. It has no known satellites (or moons).

In Roman mythology, Venus was originally a goddess of fields and gardens but later became identified with the Greek goddess of love and beauty, Aphrodite. Venus was the wife of Vulcan but was unfaithful to him many times. Among her lovers were the shepherd Adonis, the god of war, Mars, and Anchises, the father of Aeneas. Venus gave birth to the god of love, Cupid.

the symbol of Venus, the evening and morning star which is esoterically the sister planet of Earth, is the circle representing the spirit, balanced on the equal~armed cross of the elements representing the material plane.

In ancient Egypt this Venus Symbol was the ankh, which represents the union of male and female.  The ankh was universally adopted by the `flower children' of the '60's who, echoing its Venusian connection, called it the love or peace cross.  Today the planetary glyph of Venus is used in biology to signify the female.

Venus is regarded as the twin soul of the Earth.  The concept of twin souls is a very ancient one based on the esoteric beleif that originally the human race was androgynous. At some point in the distant past early humanity divided into the two sexes, so human souls continue on the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth until such time as they are incarnated in the same time period as their twin souls and become reunited.

Obviously such belief is open to abuse.  This especially happens when people who fall in love project their anima (the female aspect of the male psyche) or their animus (the male aspect of the female psyche) on to their lovers and think they have found their long lost twin soul or soul mate.  It is the negative influence of Venus that creates this type of sexual infatuation  which can be very destructive for everyone whom becomes entangled in it.

On a more positive level, the Venusian planetary influence represents the natural human desire of unitind the opposites. This can be understood in magical terms as the balancing of the male and female principles within the psyche of the magician.  This union of opposites in what is called the sacred marriage and is symbolized by the sigil of the sword in the chalice.

The magician can use the planetary force of Venus in all matters which are connected with love.  This can refer to romantic love between two people or the broader form of love which embraces the brotherhood of humanity.